Google Announced New Privacy Policy: Privacy Police or Good Business?

Google announced they will be rolling out a new privacy plan. This is in keeping with the company’s goal of creating an intuitive user experience across their more than 70 product platforms. The new, easier-to-read policy will cover all of its products and users will not be able to opt out. Changes are slated to take effect March 1, 2012.

Even though users will not have the choice of opting out, there hasn’t even been the kind of uproar that happened when Facebook advised it would institute a new timeline for users. Google assures us our searches will improve, the pop up ads will be appropriate and our spelling will be intuitive. These are just a few of the benefits the privacy policy purports to offer us.

This will happen as Google aggregates our information across platforms from Youtube to Gmail to Google+. Mashable, however, suggests there may be another way to look at this:

“Sure, everyone would like legal documents to be easier to understand. But let’s not forget about the advertisers — who are mentioned for just a second in the explanation video accompanying Tuesday’s news. These new setting could also help Google rake in more ad revenue.”

Will reluctant adapters who have struggled to maintain their attachment to personal privacy be brought dragging and screaming to the table? Fast moving changes in the internet have been forcing users to change their values. The very idea of authenticity that was so pervasive last year online when Google+ allowed only “real” identities encouraged some users to show themselves or some part of themselves that they perhaps had not done before.

This idea of authenticity has turned privacy or what we used to consider privacy on its head. In the internet world as guided by Google, relinquishing this value gives users the opportunity for a more personal web experience.

A cursory look through the hashtag #googleprivacy suggests many users are ready for the Privacy Police. There wasn’t an outcry in the twitter stream of people who said they would be leaving Google, as many others claimed with Facebook.

Most of us do not read the fine print in the privacy policies associated with the software we use. We feel powerless and resigned to surrender. This is in keeping with another of Google’s purported beliefs in transparency and the protection of personal information, which is interestingly maybe not inconsistent with the new privacy policy.

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I finally took the time to read the new Google "privacy" policy and understand there is no privacy.
I stand behind all I say and search for on the net so don't feel "trapped."
By the way here on care2 we are all tracked as well or did you not know this...